Thursday, February 18, 2010

American Football that is. This week I have been putting a lot of time in on my Rune Priest. He had been sitting in Tier 3 for a while, but yesterday I got to Tier 4. While healing during PvP, I often get the feeling I'm playing Football, more specifically the Quarterback.

In Football, You have linemen whose job it is to block and pretty much keep the opponents off of the Quarterback. The better job they do, the better their QB can preform. They end up forming a bubble, called the pocket, in which the QB can move around in.

During many scenarios, a pocket for the healer will develop. You have players attacking their lines and some keeping players off of the healer. When this happens, healing becomes much more effective. Just like offenses in Football when their QB has time to make plays.

Sometimes, there is no pocket for the healers. When that happens we often have to scramble around to get away from the charging melee. It becomes much tougher to heal if you are on the run. Just like Football, some healers can still operate well in those situations.

I'm finding the Rune Priest to be a good scrambling healer due to its many short cast-time spells and procs. Being mobile is an essential part of playing a healer in WAR. It isn't like PvE where all you have to do is move once in a while. As the battle ebbs and flows, your position on the battlefield will become very important.

Much like a Quarterback, a healer will also get all of the blame for anything that goes wrong. Even if you win and do the most healing you're likely to receive some nasty tells. Usually from Prima donna receivers, or in WAR terms: Bright Wizards.